‘Mickey came up to Louth and the rest is history’ - How Louth football has risen from ashes under Mickey Harte

Many questioned his sanity as he swapped three Sam Maguire successes for Division 4 football, but the Tyrone icon has overseen a remarkable transformation in Louth fortunes in the 18 months since his arrival.

Harte was wooed into the role by county chairman Peter Fitzpatrick – the former Louth boss who was at the helm for their controversial Leinster SFC final defeat to Meath in 2010 – and from there another fascinating chapter in his managerial career is unfolding.

“Before Gavin Devlin and Mickey Harte came, Louth football was at a very lower level,” Fitzpatrick says. “We knew from day one that we had the talent in the county, the problem was getting lads to commit and getting the best players to play for Louth.

“We had to do something, Mickey came up to Louth and the rest is history. When I sat down with Mickey, he was looking for something new and everything that I told him was the truth and Mickey really appreciated that. I didn’t tell him any lies.”

“I explained the situation that we hadn’t won a game in the last 12 or 18 months, I told him we’re under a bit of pressure in Louth at the moment and that we need him. I promised him ‘Mickey, we won’t let you down’.

“He asked me ‘is the talent in Louth?’ I told him that we had the talent and that we just needed the captain of the ship to lead us. We should have won Leinster titles in the 80s and 90s, we had fantastic teams but we just didn’t seem to have someone with the experience, enthusiasm, and belief of Mickey Harte.

“We needed someone like Mickey and it works both ways because he wanted to work with people that he could trust and we wanted someone who could come in and do the business for us.”

He certainly has with back-to-back promotions, including their recent Division 3 success in Croke Park, leaving them sitting pretty in Division 2 next year and securing their place in the All-Ireland SFC for 2023.

Fitzpatrick reveals that “young lads are telling me that they’re pinching themselves going to training to realise that Mickey Harte and Gavin Devlin are managing this team”. One of his first ports of call was to hand the captaincy to Sam Mulroy with the sharpshooter flourishing under the managerial legend’s guidance.

“I actually couldn’t believe he’s coming to Louth, it happened and it was like ‘If Mickey sees something in Louth, why don’t we see something in Louth?’ It just rolled from there,” Mulroy said recently.

“If he thinks he can come down here and change a Division 4 team, why don’t we start believing that we’re good enough to be one of the top teams?”

Fitzpatrick wasted little time in adding another two years onto Harte’s three-year contract to keep his services until at least 2025 and he loves how the legendary manager has thrown himself into Louth GAA.

Along with his right-hand man Devlin, Harte can be seen at junior, intermediate or senior games around the county scouting talent while he willingly gives his time to development squads and minor or U-20 panels.

His arrival and the senior squad’s subsequent performances have generated a “huge buzz” around the ‘Wee county’ and Fitzpatrick intends to cash in on that at underage level.

“I just said to Mickey a couple of weeks ago that we’re not looking for a quick fix, we’re very happy with the progress. Division 3 was a very tough division this year and to be quite honest, we would have been happy staying in Division 3,” he says.

“It’s like everything else at the moment, if the opportunity arises you take it. We have to work and improve and it’s not only the senior team that are doing well, we need to get a conveyor belt going that these lads can come the whole way up to senior.”

It’s unlikely to be this year, but Mulroy insists that winning provincial honours is a “realistic goal” with Harte and Devlin at the helm and it certainly looks like a rising tide has lifted all boats in the county.

They will rub shoulders with the elite next year, but a promising year will quickly go south should they fail to defeat Carlow this Sunday with a juicy Leinster quarter-final place against Kildare up for grabs.

“We have a good crop of players and there’s even more untapped talent so I’m hoping for the next number of years that we can be where we’re meant to be – up at the top,” Fitzpatrick says. “There’s a fantastic buzz and everyone wants to play for the county, but we’re not getting carried away.”

Nor will Harte, and he knows that there is a job to do this weekend with no better man to help keep Louth feet firmly on the ground.